the year, internets. she is new. i've wrestled a refill into my bright red exacompta desk planner (no digital planning in 2013! or 2012, or 2011, &c.), the party pants have migrated to the back of the closet, and drinking before noon will be taboo for at least a few months (holiday brunches, you are uncompromising). i continue to pooh-pooh resolutions, but it pains me that (per my archives) i posted only 73 times last year; comments or no comments, then, i'll be more prolific. i have also decided to flash more leg. adjust your own plans as needed.
CONSUMED AT THE CONCLUSION OF 2012: A PARTIAL LIST.
ippudo (restaurant). the vegetable hirata buns are high on my Greatest Sandwiches of All Time list, and the ramen is the best in new york (sorry, totto). it took us three passes to get a table when my sister and brother-in-law were in town last week, and not one of us held a grudge.
joseph anton (book, ongoing). salman rushdie's third-person memoir about the decade he lost to khomeini's fatwa (the imam called for his death in february of 1989 after the publication of the satanic verses, and he spent the next ten years under the british government's protection) raises a lot of questions: was his second wife really that crazy? should i read the verses again? do i have to start liking paul auster now? joseph anton - the two-thirds of it i've read, anyway - is both personal testimony and a stomp-your-feet-until-the-earth-trembles tale of how brave the publishing industry can be. who could tell a story like that about an ebook?
kitchen confidential (book). i thought anthony bourdain deserved a substantive shot at impressing me. he didn't.
life of pi (film). ang lee's majestic, no-foot-out-of-place compositions are precisely the sort of thing one wants to see in 3D - precisely the sort of thing i want to see in 3D, anyway - and i can't imagine a more graceful adaptation of yann martel's novel. it's treacly where the book is treacly, but it also makes you gasp where the book makes you gasp, and richard parker the digital tiger is a fine, fine tiger. possibly i cried when he suffered. i will not apologize for my feelings about tigers.
magic for beginners (book, ongoing). purchased on the strength of a staff recommendation at the strand; kelly link is, per both jonathan lethem and neil gaiman, "the best short story writer working today." i'm miserly when it comes to compliments like that, but i can tell you that "the faery handbag," her collection's first story (available free here) is the most original thing i've read in too long. fuck yeah, kelly link.
mission chinese nyc (restaurant). the hype is merited; we've ordered the takeout once and been to the restaurant twice, and i'd happily queue another three times this week if i thought my sore throat could take the heat. arrive at 5 with your whole party for a shot at the first seating; send a scout ant to get on the list early and plan to be in the neighborhood for an hour and a half if you can't. vegenauts, you want the (vegan versions of the) thrice-cooked bacon, the stir-fried pork jowl, the peanuts, and all of the pickles.
zero dark thirty (film). i will need to watch zero dark thirty again, for joe and i saw it when it was showing in like two theaters in the city and five in the whole country, and fools were swiveling flashlights, loitering behind the last row, and rushing in and out of the theater at our screening. it was particularly bad during the sequence in which the navy seals kill bin laden, and i was too jittery to focus. what the hell, people? i think i prefer the hurt locker, as i thought kathryn bigelow managed to flesh out jeremy renner's character in a few key scenes and i missed that with jessica chastain, but i admire her decision to tell a story that's still unfolding. is it cool that her film implies that enhanced interrogation brought bin laden down? i do think it would have been cowardly to make a film about the war on terror without addressing the fact that we tortured people. ZDT isn't a masterpiece, but it reinitiates conversations we don't have nearly enough.
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